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As of last Friday, I work for the third largest MSSP (managed security services provider.) It’s the largest “pure play” company now, meaning that we are the biggest company not in any other business but this. It’s not a sidelight, it’s the only thing we do and we focus on doing it well. Thus far, the customers seem to agree with us.

I found out about this Monday as did all the employees of the former LURHQ, but it was embargoed until today. I’m not sucking up when I say that I’ve seen a lot of mergers and buyouts of companies I’ve been involved with, and this is the one that makes the most sense of any of them. SecureWorks and LURHQ had complementary strengths that are so complementary as to be nearly disjoint. They focussed on customers of different sizes, on different technologies of protection and monitoring. The thing where they (now we) do line up is on culture, specifically the focus on customer service. That’s really the heart of this whole game. You might think it’s all about whizzy technology but it’s mostly about a timely and professional phone call from a calm sounding person that knows what they are talking about.

Like I said, the clientele is almost completely complementary. Of the combined customer list, only four or so were ones that the two companies would have previously been in competition for. That’s less than 0.5%. It can always be awkward when you have a merger of two fierce competitors and suddenly your enemies are your best friends. That’s not the case here. The former companies worked sufficiently different ecological niches as to have been in almost no direct competition.

I’m excited about the future. I had no idea something like this was on the horizon when I joined up a few months ago but I’m looking forward to seeing it out.